Setting "Setting"
The North Carolina Piedmont-based trio of Setting bring together their substantial collective skills as musicians and their collaborative, explorative mindsets from groups such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Peeesseye, Sylvan Esso, and Jake Xerxes Fussell to bear in their inventive and rich improvisations.
Multi-instrumentalists Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund subvert expectations while creating a sense of ease and wonderment. Their intricate interplay of synthesizers, cassette loops, banjo, keyboards, electronics, zithers, and a litany of percussive instruments form a tactile amalgam of celestial transcendence and terrestrial rhythm, a loamy pulse fluidly guiding every minute fluctuation in feel. Dedicated improvisers with years working together, the band has developed their own idiosyncratic vernacular and sense of flow. Setting’s self-titled album is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaiced textures.
Setting harnesses the euphoria of communal creation. “This is one of the most joyous albums I’ve made with other musicians. It felt like we were all in the slipstream,” notes Fennelly. Bowles adds: “Making this is maybe the easiest thing in my life; it’s not struggle music. This collaboration feels like it’s just coming out of the air, like it’s breathing.”
OOIOO and Lightning Bolt "The Horizon Spirals / The Horizon Viral"
OOIOO and Lightning Bolt are both bands whose music is wholly unique and whose creators’ influence would be impossible to overstate. YoshimiO, OOIOO’s founder and bandleader, has been a guiding force in uncompromising art across the continuum of rock and improvised music for four decades, from her work in UFO or Die to BOREDOMS to SAICOBAB and beyond. OOIOO serves as a core outlet for melding freeform experimentalism with hypnotic rock pulses, defying boundaries with her acrobatic voice, electronics, trumpet and gamelan. Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale and Brian Gibson have remained unparalleled in their ability to transmute frenetic whirls of percussion, gargantuan fuzz and dizzying melody into monolithic vistas. THE HORIZON SPIRALS / THE HORIZON VIRAL is a split that captures the parallels in ethos between these two ensembles, their sense of gleeful abandon and freight train momentum, in inspiring detail.
The pairing of OOIOO and Lightning Bolt is a natural extension of their decades-long bond. Following a lifetime of being inspired by and supporting one another, brought together by the overlaps in their singular visions, THE HORIZON SPIRALS / THE HORIZON VIRAL is a celebration of indomitable creativity. In their endless pursuit of crafting pure, uninhibited, enchanting art, OOIOO and Lightning Bolt continue to make astonishingly powerful, invigorating music.
Philip Glass "Prison and Protest"
Prison and protest. Two words that are extremely relevant in today’s world.
These words have a deeper meaning beyond their obvious meaning. That’s not only about a building with bars on windows, and not about demonstrations in the streets. That’s about the mental prison in which our consciousness resides, and the inner protest that inevitably arises when we realize that we are in prison. Some countries have freedom, while others do not. But in reality, a free person is free everywhere, and an unfree person is unfree everywhere. Especially now, we see that there are free people in unfree countries, and vice versa. Unfree persons who have left a dictatorial country for a free one carry their inner prison with them and remain its prisoners. But no dictatorship, no prison can turn a person who is free in the deepest sense into a prisoner.
This is the essence of Philip Glass’s entire philosophy. In one way or another, all of his music is about this. About the path to freedom.
Market East "French Street"
Market East finally shares their most important statement to the world in the form of their debut LP, French Street. The group, composed of Kurt Cain on vocals, Vincent John on vocals, bass, guitar and keys, and Maxwell Perla on vocals, drums and percussion, deliver their signature celestial three part harmonies over arrangements that have never sounded so rich and compelling.
French Street is extremely soulful and the vocals are lush, like if the Zombies recorded at Muscle Shoals. The lyrics are poetic and nostalgic, as the group wrote songs about their bygone “golden” years. Back then, the boys didn’t have much besides each other and their shared love of music. Vocalist Kurt Cain lived in a small rowhome in North Philadelphia on a nearly deserted alley named French Street. It was here that Cain, John, and Perla came together every week to escape reality and get high off sharing music. They developed a deep appreciation for all things 60s and 70s, from Simon & Garfunkel to the Moments, and everything in between.
All these years later, and Market East has created a classic record of their own. From the baroque pop of the title track and the roaring soul of “Roses,” to the Latin flavors of “Echoes of My Heart” and the orchestral flares of “Everyday, Springtime,” Market East shows their impressive range.